Learning while journeying

Do you dread Monday? From Sunday noon on, I feel like the week is rushing to Monday. When I was employed, I loved the weekend when I had time to write and play on my computer and call friends and all the things that gave me joy. It's a shame that debt keeps so many of us working so hard that we can enjoy life only in small doses. Or maybe it makes us appreciate those times even more. Would our time be as precious if we had all we wanted? We might waste it instead of treasuring it. We humans are like that; give us what we want and we find it wasn't what we wanted and so we misuse what was precious to us. Wisdom is, I think, learning to cherish what needs to be cherished. Or as a writer I admire put it: choosing clear, cold water and a sword.

Someone once said that the true test of your character is what you do when no one is looking. I've been thinking about that lately, about the choices I've made and the other paths I could have walked. I was told recently that I'm unyielding. It wasn't meant as a compliment, but I think I will take it as such. I know what's right and I know what's wrong. I know how to choose between the two. And mostly I think I chose the former, but I know of times when I chose the latter. I'm not perfect, not by a long shot, but unyielding, yeah, I'm that. When something is wrong, then we have to speak out against it. We have to oppose it. To not do so means that we simply don't care or we're too lazy to care.

I must admit sometimes I get tired of caring. People who don't care seem to have better lives than mine. They have all things by which this world measures success: money, lovers, toys, travel, etc. I guess it makes me small-minded to say I'd like a few of those cherries on my plate. Well, who doesn't? It's getting those cherries without sacrificing our morals and ideas--that's the hard thing. I don't know how it's done, but I know people do it. And maybe we will, too. If not, heck, there are worse things in this world than working hard and getting by. Don't you think so?

Learning to take joy in the journey, that's what I'm trying to do. To enjoy time with friends, to embrace the town and state and nation in which I live, to help where I can, and to pray and work without ceasing for the better world around the corner of tomorrow.

Those are my goals. I probably won't achieve them wholly. But the striving for them is what makes life worthwhile. That's my take on things this Sunday on the 19th day of the month of July in the 2020th year of our Lord.